Lawyers for justice

Popular culture just loves to stereotype lawyers as liars and cheats. We’ve all heard plenty of lawyer jokes:
What's the difference between a lawyer and a liar? The pronunciation. What's the difference between a lawyer and a vulture? The lawyer gets frequent flyer miles. How many lawyer jokes are there? Only three. The rest are true stories.

Without a long history demonstrating otherwise, one would think from these stereotypes that it’s oxymoronic for a lawyer to be a social justice advocate. But, so many watershed moments for so many progressive issues have come directly from the hard work of committed lawyers and their courageous clients. Just consider Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

I'm often asked how, other than by representing LGBT clients in court, lawyers can make a difference in the LGBT rights movement. I love this question. Not just because I think lawyers have a unique and powerful role to play. But because I think lawyers have an important stake in getting involved.

I have been active in efforts to educate and mobilize the legal bar around issues facing LGBT people for almost a decade as a board member, and former chair, of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association.

Over time, I've noticed direct connections between efforts to hurt LGBT people and attempts to erode fundamentals of justice particularly important to legal professionals, such as access to courts and checks and balances. Some versions of the Federal Marriage Amendment, for example, have proposed not only to ban anything other than heterosexual marriage, but also to strip courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to that ban.

Other "court-stripping" legislation would deprive federal courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Anti-parenting legislation introduced in Utah the past couple of years would deprive any nonbiological parent (i.e., a nonbiological lesbian co-parent, a grandmother, or a step-parent) of the ability to even get in to court to ask for visitation with a child they had helped raise.

What's happened to "every person gets her day in court?" In America, individuals and families facing terrible injustices are supposed to turn to courts for relief. It’s intuitive that lawyers should have something persuasive to say about preserving access to justice. What’s not necessarily intuitive is that we can do this to the simultaneous benefit of our profession and LGBT people.

At the beginning of February, I was witness to one of the important ways that lawyers can make a difference. With the support of the Task Force, I attended the mid-year meeting of the American Bar Association as a liaison from the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association. The American Bar Association is the national association of lawyers, law students and judges. It has a membership exceeding 410,000 people and an annual budget exceeding $150,000,000. That’s more than double the size of the combined budgets of every national LGBT group in the U.S.

At the meeting, the American Bar Association adopted Model Rules of Judicial Conduct that define the prohibition against bias based on "sex" to include transgender people. (Sexual orientation was already included.) Many of the state bars across the United States adopt these rules as their state court rules for judges. It also voted to expand its own stated organizational diversity goal to include greater participation by LGBT attorneys.

These are important developments that advance both the legal profession and LGBT rights. Although most lawyers don’t recognize this, the American Bar Association is more than a membership organization. It has significant nationwide influence in public policy debates. Lawyers who get involved in the American Bar Association and positively influence its LGBT-related policy positions advance the interests of LGBT people nationwide. That was the case at this past meeting and that’s been the case for decades.

When the American Bar Association passes organizational resolutions on important public policy issues, its paid lobbyists can then lobby legislatures to advance that position. That’s why, after the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force formed in 1973, one of its first acts was to work with the American Bar Association to pass a resolution opposing the state sodomy laws. And that's why, over the past decades, lawyers have succeeded in getting the American Bar Association to resolve to oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment, support LGBT parenting, and call for the inclusion of transgender people in local, state and federal nondiscrimination laws.

So, how do lawyers make nationwide change through the American Bar Association? It's as easy as one, two, three:

1) Become a member at http://www.abanet.org. Most lawyers are, as a matter of course, already enrolled as members through their employers. If you're not enrolled, do so. Most legal employers will pay the membership fee for a lawyer who plans to be an active member because it produces a networking-related benefit for the employer.

2) Join the Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities and any additional sections that cover your practice areas. The Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities deals often with issues impacting LGBT people. But, it does so in partnership with other sections because one lesson from the anti-marriage amendments is that the scope of anti-LGBT legislative issues often impacts entire areas of law not specific to LGBT people. Join sections dealing with employment law, family law, or whatever your expertise is — you will be all the more persuasive as an area expert communicating the broader consequences of anti-LGBT measures.

3) Communicate your interest in section policy and activities to section leadership. As with all volunteer activities, there is always more work than there is time to complete it. Section members who communicate an interest in participating will get the work. And those who get the work, make the positive change.

There are, of course, many other ways that lawyers can make a difference in the LGBT rights movement. Lawyers have unique access, perspective and skills when it comes to questions of justice and equality. But, the fact that membership within the American Bar Association is automatic for most lawyers, combined with the size of its budget, the size of its membership, and its long commitment to bettering both the profession and the lives of the diverse clients we serve, makes it an uniquely influential place to start. If we take pride in our profession and the people we serve, then when cynics make lawyer jokes, the joke's on them.

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